Another worthless cable/DSL comparison

NLkabel, the Dutch cable lobby group, ordered a study from iPing Research into speed and pricing of cable versus ADSL. Of course, they claim that cable beats ADSL and that it is cheaper too.

On the face of it, it looks like a completely worthless exercise - which can be expected from a lobby group. This is where it goes wrong:

• Cable and ADSL are compared. That should have been either Docsis x vs. xDSL (i.e. equipment), or HFC vs. copper (i.e. medium). And then there are differences in loop lengths to further complicate a solid comparison.
• Broadband is available is speed tiers. What does 'average' mean? Exactly nothing.
• When you look at actual speeds, it will be no surprise that people requiring the highest bandwidths take a cable subscription, because the fastest cable tier is faster than the fastest ADSL tier.
• Current DSL research points to maximum speeds of 800+ Mb/s, beating any available Docsis 3 based offering. (Why not add a worthless claim ourselves, comparing lab conditions to actual offers?)
• Why compare cable to ADSL and VDSL, while leaving out FTTH? Anyone?
• Broadband is offered as part of a double or triple play, so pricing is not available in many cases.

Of course, NLkabel continues its fiber claims, while speed is mainly determined by bottlenecks (and they have a 300 meter bottleneck, not counting a handful of amplifiers). There is also a claim that 50-120 Mb/s over HFC is available to 98%, which is a fluid claim as well. Hell, 1 Gb/s is avaliable to 100% of the people - just need to do some digging!

I wouldn't be surpised if research shows that men drive their cars faster then women. I also wouldn't be surprised to see that men tend to buy BMWs, while women buy a Mercedes. But does that mean that a BMW is faster then a Mercedes? Or that 'the average BMW' is faster than 'the average Mercedes'?

Some people need a lesson in logic and reasoning.

DSM increases xDSL's reach

In this podcast at Cnet, John 'copper' Cioffi talks a little bit about DSM (dynamic spectrum management), a software solution for noise cancellation on DSL lines, sold through Assia. It delivers a reach increase of 25-30%, enlarging customer reach by up to 50%, according to him. Apparently, he is betting the farm on copper, delivering up to 100 Mbps over a maximum of 1 km.

At around the 17th minute, he also talks about VDSL2 and ADSL2+.

REGULATION://Extending fiber deeper into the network challenges LLU

Deutsche Telekom is switching back to ADSL2+, apparently to have wider coverage for IPTV (T-Home). VDSL roll-out is haulted and stays at 10 cities (original target: 50).

Big changes are ahead in the European telecom sector. DT cites regulatory uncertainty for haulting the VDSL deployments.

Upgrades to ADSL2+ left the competitive landscape, based on LLU, unchanged, but VDSL and FTTH have created different environments. I believe Europe will support the survival of 'inter-copper' competition, but now it has to come up with an alternative to LLU. This is a hot topic in Germany, but even more so in the Netherlands, where OPTA has to come up with a fully-fledged alternative to LLU. Watch out for this to happen in Q2. OPTA will host an analyst meeting in The Hague next Friday (Jan 19).

So now operators have a choice:

• ADSL2+, with fiber not extending beyond the exchange. This is the case at BT, which sees no business case for FTTN/FTTC, let alone FTTH. This makes the UK an attractive market for LLU-based competition.
• FTTN + VDSL: KPN, Belgacom, DT (now haulted), TI. This renders LLU-based competition quite uncertain at the moment. Will regulaors find a fully-fledged alternative, and/or will altnets be prepared to step up their investment program to keep track with the incumbent?
• FTTH: FT (at least partly, further decisions in 2008). FT is responding to both Iliad and neuf cegetel (and Verizon), by making the network future-proof.
• A mixture of all: Most notably at Swisscom and Telefonica, but I suppose in many other countries too. FTTH is probably pretty common now for new builds.

THIRD PIPE://Benefiting from having less or better legacy infrastructure

TeleGeography reports Electropaulo plans a PLC (BPL) trial, after three years of testing. During that period, data rates increased to 200 Mbps from 45.

Some remarks:

• Third pipes are coming to life. J-COM and StarHub are doing pre-DOCSIS 3.0. BPL and DOCSIS are forcing VDSL services upon telcos - or FTTH, for that matter.
• In some cases, non-western operators seem to have the advantage of not having too much legacy infrastructure.